Video Games - Waiting for a New AAA Game (that isn't Elden Ring)

[Derfel Cadarn]

Kotor remake on hold

 

 

[Werthead]

55 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

Kotor remake on hold

Unsurprising. Aspyr have never made a new game before - which this effectively is, it wasn't a simple remaster - and were never geared up for this kind of project.

I do wonder if their original plan was more of a remaster and the more they looked at the game, the more they realised it wouldn't wash for modern gamers, so it morphed over time into a Final Fantasy VII Remake/Resident Evil 2 kind of project and they realised they just didn't have the experience or money to achieve that.

[Werthead]

A major report on Rockstar Games and GTA6.

Apparently Rockstar has undergone a massive transformation since the departure of much of the old guard and management in 2019. Mandatory overtime and crunch has been curtailed, the company has fired abusive or problematic managers and they have instituted new structures to review policies and content. Some of the series' edgelord humour has been toned down and some of the dodgier jokes and stereotypes have been reviewed in the writing for the next game. Apparently even before these changes, the early work on GTA6 was already losing some of the satirical edges, since it was now impossible to satirise what was happening in real life.

As for the game itself, work started on it in 2013 but really spooled up after RDR2 launched in 2018, as you'd expect. One early idea was called "Project Americas" and would have the game taking place across multiple cities in the southern United States and Mexico. However, that scope was later telescoped down to focus on Vice City and a surrounding area, modelled after Florida. The game also abandoned the three-character focus of GTA5 to focus on two lead characters, one of whom is the first female protagonist in a GTA game (not counting the optional protagonists in GTA1).

Apparently at launch GTA6 will be the biggest GTA game ever, with more interiors than any other game and we can assume a huge map, but GTA6 is also designed to be modular and have new cities and areas bolted on afterwards in expansions. It sounds like these will factory heavily into the version of GTA Online that launches with the game and may also provide a platform for getting content out faster in future. So rather than a GTA7, we might get a pretty big expansion within the same engine that bolts onto the GTA6 tech bed, so creating content within the same framework rather than rebuilding the framework every time.

At the moment, the game looks to be targeting a 2024 release and maybe 2025.

[Werthead]

Started playing Druidstone: The Secret of Menhir Forest after seeing it highly rated on a list of great XCOM-alikes, and I already had it from a Steam sale yonks ago. It's very linear, except you can replay missions you've already completed for extra XP, gold and bonus objectives (the amount of XP and gold you get from each mission drops each time you replay it though). The story is okay, and the game feels like a nice XCOM/JRPG hybrid, with some weird but entertaining tonal variation and solid combat and abilities.

No great shakes but a decently entertaining game anyway.

[Werthead]

Urbek City Builder is a promising city game. It's voxel based so looks a bit Minecraft, but it's quite powerful, allowing you to eventually build sprawling cities. Being able to walk around the city at any time in full 3D is quite cool. It even has a free demo on Steam, called a Prologue, which gives you a good feel for the full game.

[Caligula_K3]

I've been chugging along slowly in the Mass Effect: Legendary Edition playthrough. I recently finished Mass Effect 2 and all its DLC. What a game. Say what you will about some overall plot decisions, like killing and bringing back Shepherd in the first ten minutes of the game, but this is still an incredible game. It has one of the best cast of characters that Bioware ever developed, if not the best. It gives you fantastic opportunities for role-playing: the renegade/paragon system works perfectly in this game, since the choices become less about "do I save the orphanage or commit genocide?" than smaller scale character choices, including the ever important "do I play by the book or be an 80s action hero?" Having Shepherd work for a sketchy organization and person is a great narrative choice.  The game also just does a good job of grounding the world. Mass Effect 1 has lots of interesting setup for the different races and the state of the galaxy, but Mass Effect 2 makes the galaxy feel like a lived-in-place and the conflicts feel reel, especially through its character writing.

Also, I know that some people criticize the game for removing the RPG systems of ME1, and I'll agree that they went too far, but it is just so much more fun to play. I've gone as Vanguard on this playthrough and I love charging around the battlefield.

Of the DLC, most of it hasn't aged well. Lair of the Shadow Broker is great, even if it makes no sense that Liara becomes an information mobster, and Kasumi is a fun character. But Zaaed is a collection of edgy cliches, Firewalker was so boring I didn't finish it, and Overlord relies on some pretty offensive stereotypes about autistic people. Of all of them, though, I was most disappointed by Arrival - I'd remembered that it was pretty good. But you're railroaded down a pretty implausible story, combat without companions is less fun, and you're given no choices at all.

Now I'm a little bit into Mass Effect 3. It's been a long time since I played this one. My initial impressions are pretty good: the combat is definitely the most fun of the three, and I'm getting lots of nostalgia for all the time I put into multiplayer back in the day. The game opens powerfully with the destruction of earth. But there's also something a little hokey about the game? The companions you begin with don't make a great impression (I have to say, I'm surprised by how much I've found Liara to be an inconsistent and boring character on this playthrough), and I really dislike that Cerberus become all out villains from the very beginning, jettisoning a lot of the interesting setup from Mass Effect 2. The missions are fun, and I know I have some good ones coming up, but Admiral Hackett is also such a boring mission giver: it's tough going from post-mission arguments with the Illusive Man to "I hope this helps us fight the Reapers, Shepherd. Hackett out!"

[IlyaP]

29 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

I really dislike that Cerberus become all out villains from the very beginning, jettisoning a lot of the interesting setup from Mass Effect 2

Worth noting: they were [clearly] sign-posted as villains in ME 1 in several side-missions that involved them. 

[Caligula_K3]

56 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Worth noting: they were [clearly] sign-posted as villains in ME 1 in several side-missions that involved them. 

For sure, and I have no problem with them ultimately being villains in ME3. But you really don't learn too much about Cerberus in those ME1 side missions, and it was a pretty easy shift to go from those side-missions to Cerberus' role in Mass Effect 2. It's less easy to go from the complexities of Cerberus in Mass Effect 2 to the pure antagonism you begin with in Mass Effect 3, especially if you give Illusive Man the Collector Base, as my Shepherd did.

It's also pretty ridiculous that when you question unshackled EDI about Cerberus in Mass Effect 2, she claims that Cerberus is only composed of a few hundred people - in the first few hours of Mass Effect 3, I've probably already killed a couple hundred Cerberus troopers. They manage to go from a small organization to a full blown army very quickly...

[Corvinus85]

44 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

For sure, and I have no problem with them ultimately being villains in ME3. But you really don't learn too much about Cerberus in those ME1 side missions, and it was a pretty easy shift to go from those side-missions to Cerberus' role in Mass Effect 2. It's less easy to go from the complexities of Cerberus in Mass Effect 2 to the pure antagonism you begin with in Mass Effect 3, especially if you give Illusive Man the Collector Base, as my Shepherd did.

It's also pretty ridiculous that when you question unshackled EDI about Cerberus in Mass Effect 2, she claims that Cerberus is only composed of a few hundred people - in the first few hours of Mass Effect 3, I've probably already killed a couple hundred Cerberus troopers. They manage to go from a small organization to a full blown army very quickly...

I'm pretty sure this is explained as you go along in ME3. Especially once you do the Sanctuary mission. But yeah, some additional lines of dialogue in the beginning would have been nice about how the hell did Cerberus acquire a private army infected with Reaper tech in the span of a few months.

[Werthead]

Grounded is leaving Early Access on 27 September, so I'll probably give it whirl at that point. Another survival game with a storyline and definitive ending, made by one of my favourite developers? Will definitely give that a go.

[Kalbear]

Multiversus is damn fun and way better than it has any right to be.

[Caligula_K3]

On 7/28/2022 at 1:56 PM, Corvinus85 said:

I'm pretty sure this is explained as you go along in ME3. Especially once you do the Sanctuary mission. But yeah, some additional lines of dialogue in the beginning would have been nice about how the hell did Cerberus acquire a private army infected with Reaper tech in the span of a few months.

That makes sense. I think this also might just be a game that gets better as it goes along (minus the ending). Now that I'm past Palaven, have a few more companions, and am starting to get into some of the sidequests (including the incredible "you big stupid jellyfish" sidequest), I'm having a much better time. I also spent a good fifteen minutes listening to the Blasto movie, which is incredible.

[Rhom]

Saw a Starship Troopers RTS pop up in my feed on Steam the other day.  Anyone have any idea if its good or not?

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Rhom said:

Saw a Starship Troopers RTS pop up in my feed on Steam the other day.  Anyone have any idea if its good or not?

I've seen solid but unspectacular reviews. A wait for a Steam sale kind of deal.

[RumHam]

I played the first level in Rogue Squadron last night for the first time in decades. The N64 version wouldn't run on emulators for years but I guess they got it working. On a whim I clicked it on the steam deck last night and was shocked to see the "expansion pack detected" screen pop up.

That distance fog is rough though. I wonder if it's any better on the PC version. I tried that years ago and it ran like shit but I should try on the steam deck 

[Werthead]

Wrapping up Druidstone. Very solid game, if you want "fantasy XCOM" this scratches that itch (although the Banner Saga trilogy is overall the stronger series for that). It's tight, it's focused, it's borderline Final Fantasy copyright-infringing, and it's fun. Doesn't outstay its welcome, but both the levelling system (which grants you new abilities) and gem upgrade system (which boosts those abilities and unlocks new ones) are really fun and reward some replaying and fiddling around. Also, the ability to replay any mission at any time with your newly-upgraded powers is cool.

[IlyaP]

I finished up my replay of Tomb Raider, aka Tomb Raider: Survivor. The game is honestly best experienced in 2022 with a reshade that restores the drained color that's oddly filtered out in the original release version. It is, on replay, a much better experience the second time around, especially in light of an expectation and understanding of the [thankfully] few quicktime events located within the game.

That said, several bugs do still remain within the game, including a frustrating clipping error near the hunter's lodge that drops players beneath the map - which, though providing some interesting insight into the details and engine mechanics, is still a bit of a pain to escape. I hope someone at Crystal Dynamics might one day patch this. (Hell, I'd be happy to walk them through each and every bug I found!) Sadly, the opening title reveal sequence still features odd lighting and rendering issues that causes the screen to transform into a heckin' mess of triangles when the camera is moved in certain directions.

And something I did not notice on my first playthrough: despite using motion capture to better depict the movements of Lara (courtesy of the brilliant Camilla Luddington), Lara's face doesn't move in sync with the dialogue in non-cinematic sequences, as meshes were used for facial animations in the place of more conventional (but CPU/GPU-intensive) polygons.

All that said and done, it's a brilliant reimagining of Lara Croft and a terrific direction for the series following the less than satisfying Legend Trilogy - which didn't quite stick the landing with its final title, Tomb Raider: Underworld.

All in all, Tomb Raider: Survivor (as I think it ought to have been subtitled, if only to not cause taxonomic confusion) is a majestic game, whose developers were clear fans of The Descent, and who clearly put a lot of love and care into crafting a game where each and every character received a sufficiently satisfying character arc - whilst also laying the groundwork for the antagonists of the subsequent sequels - Trinity.

[Werthead]

Kicked off Subnautica: Below Zero. Very solid so far, much more polished than the first game. Also a little more hardcore in how you start: you can freeze if you spend too much time above water (the first game almost encourages you to stay on the surface for the first couple of hours) and there's no infinite, regenerating supply of medkits. Also, you don't have the crashed mass of the Aurora as a constant navigation aid and logical destination for your first few hours of play. You do have to maybe aggressively head out and brave the elements and risk drowning a bit more than in the first game to build up an initial supply of raw materials and resources. It does take a bit longer to get base-building underway and raw materials are a bit more of a challenge to find early on.

[Caligula_K3]

I'd forgotten how great the middle of Mass Effect 3 is. The Tuchanka missions are phenomenal. I'm starting the Quarian vs. Geth stuff now and it's similarly exciting. In these missions, Bioware did a great job making you feel like you really were in the culmination of three games worth of plot, characters, and choices.

The attack on the Citadel... Is not so great. I'm still confused why Udina is Council Ambassador in this game, let alone why he suddenly becomes a Cerberus agent. Shockingly, Kai Leng is also not a very compelling villain.

But that's just one weird mission. My only real annoyance with Mass Effect 3 right now: I'm not sure why, but The Legendary Edition is cutting out characters and content. All my squad and crew members survived Mass Effect 2, but Thane and Kelly Chambers never showed up on the Citadel for me, Miranda appears to have gone MIA after one chat, etc... Really weird stuff, especially since I can't remember ever having issues like this when I played the trilogy before.

[Werthead]

40 minutes ago, Caligula_K3 said:

The attack on the Citadel... Is not so great. I'm still confused why Udina is Council Ambassador in this game, let alone why he suddenly becomes a Cerberus agent. Shockingly, Kai Leng is also not a very compelling villain.

I believe a lot of this stuff is from the spin-off novels (I just picked up the first trilogy, so will check that out).

Quote

 

But that's just one weird mission. My only real annoyance with Mass Effect 3 right now: I'm not sure why, but The Legendary Edition is cutting out characters and content. All my squad and crew members survived Mass Effect 2, but Thane and Kelly Chambers never showed up on the Citadel for me, Miranda appears to have gone MIA after one chat, etc... Really weird stuff, especially since I can't remember ever having issues like this when I played the trilogy before.

 

I believe Kelly only appears in ME3 if you romanced her in ME2, but I could be wrong.

Miranda's quest goes AWOL for quite a while. I remember puzzling about her vanishing, but then I think she suddenly popped up on the communicator in the Spectre office on the Citadel, which felt random (the left-most of the three terminals).

Thane should always show up as long as he survived in ME2, though I can't remember if he just appears or he contacts you first.